B(lack)SOD after closing GPU demanding applications and games

Hello there,

hope that some techie-demigod around this forum is able to help me with this strange crashing pattern.

It started yesterday evening while playing a Dead by Daylight on steam. Suddenly, while trying to leave the game, the screen went black and the GPU fans instantly went to full power. The only way to exit this state was a hard reset. Those things may happen I thought to myself

I rebooted and started another session. Again, upon leaving game, the machine produced a B(lack) Screen of Death. I tried a few more times, each attempt endling in the same result.

Fed up with it I switched to playing Total War: Warhammer. While alt-tabbing to look something up on the net, the box again went to hell.

So I fired up my HW and Event monitors to dig for the root cause. Hardwaremonitor looked unsuspicious. The were no recorded power peaks or drops and while the internal tempreture was pretty warm (around 77°closed and 61° with opened side panel) while running furmark, its nowhere near to the GPU max temp of 95°. After closing furmark - guess what - Black Screen Of Death.

In the event monitor, I found some errorcode 0x00000133. I have no clue of debugging but with the help of a youtube tutorial and WinDBG I was able to analyse one of the crashdump files. There I found something thats saying DCP_WATCHDOG_VIOLATION and that was referenced to a NVIDIA driver file "nvlddmkm.sys".

So I completely removed all NVIDIA stuff with DDU and re-installed the latest NVIDIA driver package. This had no effect. So I again removed all NVIDIA files and installed a 3 month- old driver package. Again after closing a performance-hungry application or app => Monitor loses signal => GPU fans go nuts => Only way to exit is hard reset.

While idling, surfing, or watching videos the system runs absolutely stable.

What is this? Is my GeForce dying? All available dump,log and config files attached.

I am clueless and you are my last hope

Best

Hendrik

Hi and thanks for the quick response. :)

Nope no graphical artifacts while using Furmark.

I had a graphical glitch on reboot after the second BSOD I experienced. I had to reset a second time. Then the system booted normally.

Best

Hendrik

UPDATE:

Spend the last night on a complete overhaul operation.

- wiped out graphics drivers again and reinstalled the latest version
- updated all other drivers in my system to latest level
- Updated the BIOS to latest level
- performed a registy cleaup
- got rid of my old anti-virus software
- die an autostart/background service cleanup and removed all unnessecary apps
- performed a 2 hour memtest on 4 Instances - passed
- Full SFC scan - passed
- CHKDSK run - passed

Still BSOD.

Meanwhile I mad so more observations.

- For some reason no new dumps are created after having these crashes.
- The crash pattern is a bit clearer now. It only happens after switching from 3D graphics to 2D Desktop environment and only if I have spend enough time in the 3D environment (>~10 Mins) . After exiting the game or app, I can see the desktop for 1 or two seconds. The I hear a "click" noise inside of my PC. Immediately after the click the Monitor looses its signal and the GPU fans fire up to max capacity. It stays like this forever without hitting the reset button. After reseting the system is booting as usual.
- When I check the event monitor after rebooting, there is an "nvlddmkm has stopped responding and has recovered" milliseconds before the crash.

Be honest with me. Do I have to get a new graphics card?

to 1: Already tried that.

to 2: I will be able to get an old Radeon 6950 on the weekend. That card is able to run Dead by Daylight. So I will do a testun with that card and that game on monday. Replicating the parameters that lead to a crash with the current card.

Will update here afterwards.

UPDATE:

Just installed the Radeon 6950 using the PCIe slot the GeForce originally was seated.

First I ran 30 minutes Furmark in torture mode. While this nearly turned the GPU into a mini nuke, I was able to exit to desktop and to alt-tab without any problems.

I played thirty minutes of Dead by Daylight afterwards. While looking ugly and lagging like hell i was again able to switch from 3D to 2D mode without any problems.

So while there is a small chance that this crashes are caused on the software-side within the NVIDIA drivers its way more likely the root cause sits in my graphics card. Luckily theres still a valid manufacturer warranty in place.

So I will send it back to them and wait for my replacement.

Thanks all. If the issues ressurrect when its back, ill be back too :)

Best regards

Hendrik